someone else doesn't, that's what humans are meant to do. that's what we're about trying to do, and the moon is the next step to getting us on to exploring the rest of the solar system is that is reasonable to explore. >> pretty expensive. how did they come up with a price tag on something like this? $1.5 billion? >> you know, that's not such a bad price, actually, $1.5 billion, when you consider that it costs maybe what, $100 billion to get the apollo mission up and done before. so $1.5 billion is pretty good. i'd do that. >> and no taxes on the moon is what i hear. >> exactly. >> derrick, great to have you with us. >> thank you, ed. >> that's it. i'm ed schultz. "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. >> do you remember when these billboards went up this year in ohio and wisconsin? voter fraud is a felony. up to three and a half years and a $10,000 fine. the big gavel banging down. so you see, you viscerally feel how scary this voting thing

might be. be careful with voting. you might go to jail if you try to vote. in the weeks before the election this year, an anonymous someone paid for dozens of these billboards in largely poor, largely minority neighborhoods in ohio and in milwaukee, wisconsin. across the bottom of the billboard, and in kind of small print, the sign said, quote, paid for by a private family foundation. excuse me. and for a while, that was all that we knew about who was behind these be afraid to vote billboards in mostly black neighborhoods. the corporation clear channel, who sold the ad space on the billboards, they would not say who this private family foundation was. our sister site, the grio later uncovered the name of that private family foundation. it was a conservative foundation in wisconsin, headed up by a husband and wife who were maxed out donors to the mitt romney presidential campaign. but then with the billboards though, it didn't happen for the

first time this year in 2012. the same thing with the very similar billboard happened in the previous election in the midterms in 2010. see, on the bottom there, that is the voting is scary billboard from this year. and above that, that's the voting is scary billboard that appeared in many of the same neighborhoods in milwaukee, wisconsin back in 2010 when republican scott walker was running for governor of wisconsin. the 2010 billboards also said in almost the exact same language that they were paid for by some anonymous private family foundation. but we learned in october that it was a private family foundation that is run by now governor scott walker's campaign chair. so the voting is scary billboards in 2012 were paid for by a foundation belonging to a wisconsin mitt romney donor, and the same type of billboard was paid nor in 2010 by a foundation run by scott walker's campaign chair. that same foundation from 2010, the one with the intimidating billboards in the walker campaign chair, that same

foundation it turns out is also now a major funder of the anti-union rights ambush attack that is going on in michigan right now. with support from conservative outfits like to mackinaw foundation and americans for prosperity, both of which are funded by the be afraid to vote billboards guy, michigan republicans have turned on a dime since they lost seats in this last election. they are moving now at lightning speed to strip union rights in the state of michigan, unilaterally, immediately, irreversibly, and without any meaningful chance for debate. it is the biggest political news in the country. on the anti-union side of the surprise attack, you will find the right wing institutes in the midwest and in the upper plains with funding from the voting is scary foundation. on the other side, fighting to defend union rights, you'll find, naturally, unions, which of course will be essentially gotten rid of with this legislation that the republicans and their conservative donors are pushing through.

think about that. it's kind of a striking thing here. the raw political side of this. "the nation" magazine looked into who the supporters were on both sides of this issue, and they found that the only competition on the pro union rights side is the unions themselves. who of course this fight is designed to quash, to make go away. it's a handy way of getting your way, right? existentially erasing your opposition. it's the politics of process as much or more than it is the politics of substance. so, you know, you keep the other side's voters from voting somehow. you screw up the district map, so no matter how many more votes are cast for team a over team b. it's team b that always wins a majority of the seats anyway. you use state law to eliminate the existence of institutions that tend to support the other party come election time. it's not about persuading voters. it's about the process, right? it's about changing the rules of our democracy so you win, even if the voters like the other side more than they like you.

you just keep enough power and enough legislative seats to restructure the political playing field the way you want, as fast as you want. so thursday at 11:00 a.m. out of the blue, governor rick snyder of michigan announced a press conference at which he reversed his long held and very publicly held stance against changing union rights in his state. that was at 11:00 a.m. on thursday. an hour and a half later, by 12:30 p.m., the capitol police had shut down the capitol building, sealed off the building so protesters and members of the public could not get in. by 3:15, bills to strip union rights in the state were taken up in both chambers of the state legislature. by 4:00, there was a court order to reopen the state capitol to let the people in again. but before 5:00, before an hour was up, the house had already voted it through. then before 8:00, the senate had voted it through as well, and it was done. it was done, all in one day that didn't even start until an hour before lunch time. all in one day between 11:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m., start to finish.

and tomorrow, after a very minor amount of house keeping in the legislature, governor rick snyder says he is going to sign it. it's not like this is what the campaign was about. snyder was against this. this wasn't what the legislative race was about this year. those bills were never given any sort of hearing. they were never subject to any sort of committee. they were never put through the committee process. they were just passed in the elementary equivalent of a blink. and that is why lansing, michigan's capital, looked like this that day. remember, this all happened without warning. and so all the people you can see at the state capitol, all the people who turned out that day, turned out on zero notice, with zero organizing. just ran to the capitol as soon as they heard what was going on. and as soon as they heard what was going on, it was basically done. so that was the scene on thursday. if you're wondering why it was chaotic, that's why. this weekend, supporters of union rights went to trains on how to protest peacefully and safely while still getting noticed.

today there was a relatively small number of protesters at the state capitol, but they said that they had just done that to maintain some sort of presence there in anticipation of what is expected to be a very large scale protest tomorrow. and into the middle of all of this today stepped the president of the united states of america. president obama arrived today in michigan at daimler plant outside of detroit to give a speech on the well-being of the american middle class, and the american economy. and ultimately, what republicans are doing right now with no notice in michigan. >> what we shouldn't be doing is trying to take away your rights to bargain for better wages and working conditions. [ cheering ] right-to-work laws, they don't have to do with economics. they have everything to do with politics. >> michigan republican governor rick snyder was invited to

attend the president's speech today in his state. the governor declined. he did not show up. but the governor and the president did speak on the tarmac at the airport when the president's plane landed in michigan, and the length of their conversation at least makes it appear that it was more than just a hey, how are you. on top of all that today, the entire congressional delegation, at least the democrats from the michigan congressional delegation all came back today to try to save union rights in their state, to try to stop this speeding train that no one knew was coming. these meetings today with governor snyder asking him to at least slow the process down, if not stop the process all together. while it was all democrats who met with governor snyder today, all democrats, from the president on the tarmac to carl levin the senator to all those members of congress, all meeting to try to talk the governor off this ledge, it was not always like this about union rights in michigan or anywhere, but specifically in michigan. it was not always a democrats versus republican thing.

the specific union rights that rick snyder and the republicans in the legislature seem to be about to strip in that state were enshrined in michigan law in the first place by this guy, former michigan governor george romney, father of mitt romney, revered republican figure, and frankly, revered figure in michigan state politics. governor rick snyder's office is in a building called the george w. romney building. they hold him in high regard there. congressman sander levin recounted the story today at the "washington post" of how union rights were enshrined by governor romney. congressman levin met with governor romney in the 1960s when mr. levin was a state senator. he says, quote, we sat there for an hour. the governor was in a rocking chair with his blue sweater. and he said, well, i think we have resolved all the issues. let's proceed. the two pieces of legislation that governor romney and democrats in the legislature passed in 1965 marked a major step forward, major step forward

for labor relations, providing full collective bargaining rights to public employees and strengthening them for private sector employees. both passed on solid bipartisan basis. thank you, mitt romney's dad. but support for union rights isn't just ancient republican history, or ancient conservative history in michigan. i mean governor snyder and these guys in the legislature may be unified right now in their efforts to take away right now union rights that their party once championed. but as eager as they seem to be to jam through these changes now with no warning, they have not even bothered to get their own side on their side in michigan. look at "the detroit free press," which endorsed rick snyder in 2010. this is the front page of "the detroit free press." they put a red-framed all but all caps editorial on their front page yesterday. it is titled "a failure of leadership." check this out. two years ago, a newly elected rick snyder told "the free press" editorial board he was determined to be a new kind of

governor, a pragmatist focused like a laser on initiatives that promise to raise standards of living for all michiganders. until last week, we believe believed him. for two years we believed him. for two years we trusts snyder's agreement. with conviction that they war electing someone more independent and more visionary than partisan apparatchiks like wisconsin's scott walker and florida's rick scott. the real motive of michigan's right-to-work champions is pure greed, the determination to emasculate once and all the democratic party's most reliable organizational support. snyder's right-to-work legalization is an attempt to institutionalize republicans' current political advantage. everything else is window dressing. michigan's governor has abdicated his leadership responsibilities to republican legislators bent on vengeance. and that comes from a paper that endorsed rick snyder.

they are supposed to be on his side. not on this. also, a modern republican governor of michigan watching the fights over stripping union rights in neighbors ohio and wisconsin inside out these past ol' years. one republican michigan governor of late said just this year that michigan would never make that mistake. he told a u.s. house committee i don't believe it's appropriate in michigan during 2012. another quote, you look now that they've had those things happen, talk about neighboring states. do they have a productive environment to solve problems? not necessarily. they're still overcoming the divisiveness, the hard feelings from all of that. that last quote of course was from rick snyder. current governor of michigan, who is apparently now been convinced that nothing is too divisive for his state. what happened to governor rick snyder around so fast on this? and what is going to happen to michigan if they pushed this

through, as they say they are going to at lightning speed as early as tomorrow morning with no debate? joining us now for some insight is andy potter. he is a state vice president in the michigan corrections labor union. mr. potter himself is a republican, which makes me particularly grate to feel have a chance to talk to you tonight. so thank you for being here. >> absolutely. >> you are republican. your republican party is poised to strip union rights in a way that they didn't campaign on and that nobody really saw coming. why do you support union rights and what do you think is going on with your party? >> well, i support union rights because i've seen throughout the years the good that they have done in bringing to light some of the injustices that happened even in the workplace along with elected politicians. they create leverage and give regular citizens and middle class individuals the right to have a say so when it comes to politics and hold their elected politicians accountable.

and as far as the republican party goes, it's a sad day in michigan. they're going to with the swipe of a pen, they're going to erase many generations, legacies. and it's an inheritance that had been passed down that created the middle class here in michigan. and that will all be gone in a day if they have their way. >> there used to be a bipartisan consensus in michigan and in some cases around the country about basic union rights. whether or not people agreed with, you know, economic theories about the power of the working class and everything, the idea that basic union rights were an american value used to be something that both sides agreed on. why do you think that broke down? or what have you seen about how that broke down in michigan? >> well, it's -- i think it's obvious to a lot of people that money has come into the game here in such a way that you have extremely greedy corporations and others that are absolutely

taking over the politics of today. and it's disheartening to a lot of republicans like myself to see the middle class going down the way it's going down, and to see the kind of packaging that they're putting around this. it's upsetting to me and others as well. >> because governor snyder had been saying publicly for so long that he wasn't going to do something like this, and then we saw it move so fast. thursday morning he says actually i'm for doing this now, and by the time people got ready for din they're night, it's done, without any public debate, without it being an issue in the election. that speed on it, i guess it injects into this a whole another element of politics. i know that he had said that he welcomed a dialogue in this issue. i'm also told you were not able to talk with him as a republican and as a union leader. has that been a frustrating part of the process? >> it's been extremely frustrating. i just went with a simple message.

and the simple message, it doesn't really matter, rachel, if you're a republican, democrat, rich, or poor. in michigan we should all look at this and be ashamed and be absolutely outraged at the way the republican party has handled their business. and to not even communicate that in a way that allows michigan citizens to have their say so in this is extremely frustrating. and i don't think -- i don't think they have heard the last of this. i believe that a lot of folks in michigan are fed up with it and are going to continue to hold them accountable for everything they're doing. >> i know that state officials say they're expecting big protests at the capitol tomorrow. i know that competing permits have been issued for different groups. we saw big spontaneous protest there's on thursday. what do you think is going to be the impact of those protests, of those demonstrations? do you think that might have any impact on what happens now?

>> you can only hope that it does. we hope that the elected politicians and rick snyder are going to see that michigan is not going to just stand by and threat kind of thing go down in michigan. a lot of republican people that i know, friends, relatives and otherwise are going to show up, and they're going to voice their opinion on this. and you can only hope that there is an impact made through that. >> andy potter of the state vice president of the michigan corrections organization, which is a labor union, republican leader of the sciu. thank you very much. stay in touch with us. thanks. still to come tonight, we have frank rich here for the interview. we have some good news, we have some bad news, and some very exciting news about something that somebody from msnbc did on television that was really awesome. stay with us. n from the sweet monk fruit, something this delicious could only come from nature. new nectresse.

the 100% natural no-calorie sweetener made from the goodness of fruit. new nectresse. sweetness naturally.

good news and bad news. let's start with the good. you may remember our coverage from a few weeks ago about hurricane sandy doing a number on the veterans hospital in manhattan. a lot of hospitals took it bad in this storm. but veterans hospital took it really bad. the basement and the ground floor were totally flooded. their only mri machine was lost to the saltwater gods. the elevators and the fire protection system were no longer. the whole electrical system and all the mechanical systems were blown out. massive, massive damage in a massive facility, which means that the veterans hospital was

one of four hospitals in the city that had to close down entirely. and that has meant that emergency rooms and other facilities in the remaining still open hospitals in the city have been overwhelmed with a big increase in patients. the whole thing was and is a mess. well, when we reported on that dire situation at the veterans hospital a few weeks ago, the most dire part of it was the prospect that it would never reopen. they were not even making estimates of when it might open again, if ever, which is a daunting thing for the largest city in the country which has a huge concentration of veterans. but as i said, this is the good news part of it. and there is some good news here. after refusing to initially say if that hospital was ever going to come back, the v.a. has finally announced a reopen date for that hospital. they say they will reopen the outpatient clinic, at least at the manhattan v.a. hospital in march. there is no word yet on when the in-patient facility will be open. but you know what? for a place that we didn't know was ever going to reopen ever, this is not a bad start.

so that is the unexpectedly good news. now the bad news. the bad news is nationwide bad news. in fiscal year 2011, so last year, there was an unimaginably bad wait time for veterans who were coming home and putting in claims at the v.a. for a disability. so if you are hurt or injure order have an ongoing health consequence from your deployment, from your time in the service, you come home, you get out of the military, and then it is time for us, the people of the united states of america to make good on our promise to you that you'll get health care and that you and your family will be taken care of in terms of your service-connected disability. it is quite literally the least that we can do. and we promise to do it. so last may the wait time for those veterans once they filed, the wait time to hear anything back from the v.a. was just horrendous. people on average last year were waiting almost six months to hear anything back. last year six-month wait times. this year it's not six months

anymore. this year it's now nearly nine months. the average amount of time veterans have to wait for their benefits has over the last year and a half been going up steadily, every single month. this summer the v.a. secretary, general eric shinseki said the goal was to get the wait time down to four months. and instead of going down even toward four months, it's going up and up and up and up, to the current level, which is the longest wait time the v.a. has recorded since they started recording these numbers, which is 20 years ago. how can this be? and it's not just disability claims that are taking longer to deal with. it's also education benefits and burial claims and appeals. so for example, if you're a veteran, and you do get an initial response from the v.a., but you want to appeal the decision that they made about your benefits, your appeal right now is likely to get processed on average in about two and a half years. and that's after waiting your average of nine months for your initial claim that you ended up

appealing. so think about this. you're just back from the war. you're injured. you leave the military. average wait times now mean it could take roughly four years to start to get the benefits that you need and deserve and earned and were promised? and in the meantime, good luck. make it on your own for four years. we have been reporting for a long time now on how bad this problem. the fact that it is getting worse and not better as time goes on now requires an explanation. not to mention a solution. this is now officially nuts.

there is a semi-famous cartoon from the "new yorker" magazine by roz chast. do you know the one called insomnia jeopardy? the categories of things you think about when you cannot sleep. ways in which people have wronged me. strange noises. diseases i probably have. it's genius, right? as jeopardy. so why did i say/do that for $50, alex. he is a genius. insomnia jeopardy is a perfect, perfect thing. and yesterday morning on sunday morning on national television, in front of millions of people, there was also a perfect thing done by someone you know in service of our great nation and our usually kind of lousy political media. it happened in washington on a sunday before noon, and it did not suck. i will take who made perfect political television with newt gingrich, alex, for a thousand. that's coming up.

hold on.

as the republican party and the conservative movement try to figure out who they are in the wake of this year's elections

and who is in charge, right, on the conservative cable news network, the fox news channel, it is reported now that the two political analysts moses closely associated with not just wanting mitt romney to win the presidential election, but saying mitt romney would win the presidential election, those two analysts have been benched by cable executives. one of them is karl rove, who famously on election night tried to convince fox news-watching americans that mitt romney had not really lost ohio. that could not be. not when he, karl rove, had spent $390 million raised from conservative zillionaires to make sure that never happened. same goes for this guy. his name is dick morris. he not only said repeatedly and emphatically that mitt romney would win the election, he was the guy who said mitt romney would definitely win in a landslide. he has apparently been benched at fox news as well.

that does not mean, however, that dick morris is taking a break. oh, no. at dickmorris.com today, you can learn about how president obama is moving forward on gun control. which given the politics around gun control would be kind of amazing if it were happening, right? but of course it is not happening. i mean dick morris says it is happening, but that is no reason to believe a thing is happening in this sane, sane world. complicating their on-arian list roles for the fox news channel, most mr. rove and mr. morris were not just operating as observers on the election or commentate owners the election, they were both active participants in this election. both men had their own superpacs invested in the outcome of the election. media matters took a look at the fec filings for mr. morris's superpac that were released last week, and they found something strange. check out dick morris's website again. if you get past the gun control nonsense, if you click through to dickmorris.com/advertisingand

information, you can see there if you would like to send e-mails to the rarefied strata of america who are people who believe things that dick morris says, you can pay to newsmax.com between $10 and $35 for each thousand names to get access to and use the dick morris e-mail distribution list. it's got about a half million people on the list. the minimum order they say is the full list, which means it's wicked expensive to e-mail dick morris fans with whatever it is you want to e-mail them about. but if you look at the fec filings for dick morris's superpac that he was operating, the two largest expenditures in the weeks leading up to the election were a credit card processing company that was handling the logistics of people who wanted to give him money, and also newsmax.com, where you can rent dick morris's e-mail list. and that's where he spent his money marked as fundraising. so based on those reports to the fec in terms of what he was

spending his money on, the folks at media matters surmise that a significant proportion of the superpac's money likely went to renting dick morris's own e-mail list, which is operated by newsmax media. so your money in other words goes to dick morris who apparently then pays it to newsmax to send e-mails, and then newsmax maybe just pays it back to dick morris to pay for the e-mail addresses to which they just sent all of his e-mails. nice work if you can get it, right? what these financial reports seem to indicate that s that donations to dick morris's superpac substantially end up just going to dick morris, which he presumably uses to send more e-mails to get more money, which goes to dick morris. this is based on media meters' review of these fec reports from the end of the last election. and the superpac has been around for the last couple of years. maybe it doesn't always work like this. maybe it's not always a scam. but this scammy looking arrangement for the period right before the presidential election

is coming to light right on the heels of a high profile eyebrow-raising sudden and unexpected resignation at another conservative fundraising juggernaut, freedomworks. the dick armey resignation seemed strange from the start when mother jones first broke the story a week ago. first of all, there was dick armey's weird resignation letter that got leaked demanding that his name and likeness not be used in any freedomworks materials. subsequent to that came the news that mr. armey had arranged for an $8 million golden parachute for himself provided by an influential republican fundraiser, which did not seem very grassrootsy at all for a supposedly grassroots group. he gets $8 million once he leaves. subsequent to that emerged the details or at least the allegation of the relatively scammy reason that mr. armey left the group. politico.com reporting that the other recognizable guy at freedomworks besides dick armey,

a guy named matt kibbe had allegedly used freedomworks' staff and resources to write his book, even though all the profits from the book were just going to him, going to matt kibbe. anybody donating to freedomworks, anybody donating to freedomworks was effectively paying for the staff time and the resources to produce a project that just personally profited one of the people who work there's. a scam. it's like the newt gingrich direct mail scam, right, where newt gingrich would give businesses fake awards, where what you won was the opportunity to give $5,000 to newt gingrich to meet him? also, you would get a souvenir gavel. congratulations to you. where is your check for me? it's also like that scammy campaign where mike huckabee was appearing in the repeal obama care now ads. repeal it now. you go to their website, and what do you see? it's now or never, and a giant button at the bottom of the

screen that you can click to help fund the battle. and what do they want you to do in terms of helping to fund the battle? they would prefer that you donate $2500 to join the chairman's circle, which is also, i'm not making this up, called the huckabee special. and that will, in their own words help keep mike huckabee on tv to repeal obama care. will having mike huckabee on tv repeal obama care? i'm checking with the constitution, but i don't think so. but mike huckabee would please like to stay on tv, if for no other reason than to keep asking for more of your money to help him stay on tv asking for more money. it is maybe inevitable that somebody is going to try to turn impotent political rage and ignorance into personal financial gain. it has been happening as long as there has been snake oil and hucksters, which is not the root word of mr. huckabee's name. i did check that. this isn't just some con man off the street.

i mean mike huckabee, for whatever you think of him w, he came in second the last time the republicans nominated somebody for president. in the 2008 election, mike huckabee essentially came in second to john mccain. which is now the part where i tell you that the guy who came in second this year, the guy who came in second to mitt romney, where does he work now? he works at world net daily, which is admittedly hilarious, because it's a mad libs choose your own adjective. plug in muslim, guy, murder, communist and michelle and see what comes out. but in addition to being inadvertently hilarious, world net daily is now home to the runner-up from this last year's republican presidential nominating contest, and world net is also a scam. rick perlstein wrote a great piece that came out before the election in the baffler about how world net daily and dick morris's pals at newsmax are essentially operating systems designed to feet the contact

information for gullible and overexcited conservatives to people who can part them with their money. right? and if you are a person who has long been struck by and fascinated by how similar the conservative be afraid direct mail that asks for money looks to the kind of direct mail that tries to scam your grandmother out of her save remember fred thompson and the reverse mortgage thing? yeah. it is amazing to see. if you have been watching this over time is one of the amazing things about it is how persistent it is. it just doesn't go away. if you have any conservative sort of name for yourself, the odds are pretty good you're going to end up in some sort of scam designed to part gullible conservatives from their wallets. what might be new, though, that after this last election, at least some folks on the right appear to finally be seeing this as a problem for the american right. conservative bill kristol, writing for the weekly standard says, quote, the conservative is in deep disarray, reading about some conservative organizations and republican campaigns these

days, one is reminded of eric hoffer's remark, every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket. it may be that major parts of american conservatism have become such a racket, that a kind of refounding of the movement as a cause is necessary. frank rich joins us in just a moment.

the one and only frank rich is here for the interview, next.

behold! rachel maddow approvingly quotes bill kristol, without snarky comments. "read about some conservative organizations and campaigns these days, one is reminded of eric hoffer's remark, every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business and eventually degenerates into a racket. it may be that major parts of american conservativism have become such a racket that a kind of refounding of the movement as a cause is necessary." joining us tonight for the interview is frank rich. he is "new york" magazine writer at large. mr. rich, it's great to have you here. >> great to be here as always. >> in part, i enjoy these stories because it is fun to figure out ways that people have managed to do politics in a way that works out to be a great business for themselves. >> free market principles. the market all goes, accrues to them. >> i sort of wonder about that. should it be okay at freedomworks that you scam people out of their money,

thinking it's for the campaign and it really just gets spent on something that you're going to profit from? should that be okay? because they're sort of randian economic anarchists, and if you can scam people out of their money, you deserve their money than they do? >> it is consistent with randian principles, i think. take a look back at ralph reed and pat robertson. it was all about generating this list, figuring out ways to sell them to others, using them to raise money on "the 700 club," trying to sell products, some of seemingly dubious value, and it's -- so i guess at least they're not hypocrites. >> right. >> yes, in a way. but i feel like it was -- i feel like it made sense in an instrumental way before, essentially before the internet. i realize i sound like an old-timer at this point. but in a preinternet, presocial media world, having people's addresses, having people's base contact information was sort of enough to give you the

appearance of being a movement. you'd have people send in a million different postcards or send in a million different faxes, and it would look like you were a lot of people before that stuff could be very regimentally automated. now that stuff really doesn't fly anymore and you need to contact people in a much more substantive way in order or the those things not to look fake, i feel that this machinery that the republicans built up worked for them to look like a movement for a long time, and now it's just sort of unraveling into just scam. >> well, you may be right. it's almost as if the addresses they have now, dick morris's list of 460,000. how did he come up with that number? why not 450 or 470. who are those people? it seems sort of a form of spam. and i think when we saw the big failure during the actual election of romney's get out the vote efforts, his attempts technologically to track who is voting, my guess is that some of this misinformation from these sources filtered into him, just

as dick morris had fraudulent -- not fraudulent, but completely erroneous polls, very suspect polls. who knows how many people like him, including him, were feeding voter information to the romney campaign. >> right. sort of an inch deep and a mile wide, that we've got all of these numbers that we can monetize for ourselves, but they don't really translate into real voter contacts and real persuasion and real activism. >> right. and for all we know a lot of them are just junk listings, you know, the way that magazines, again, back in prehistoric times, a magazine like the saturday evening post would have more subscribers than any other magazine. but they were going to dead letter boxes or going to people who were literally dead or to people who didn't read. but you can generate that stuff. and now when it infiltrates the political system, kit be devastating like everything else that was factually off the republicans this year. >> i feel like in the lead-up to the 2012 primary process on the

republican side, everybody could see from a mile off that newt gingrich was going to run. >> right. >> and i felt like should it have been a harbinger of what is to come, to look at what newt gingrich was doing right up into the moment that he started to run. he is sort of running his newt gingrich enterprises. and the reason he ended up embarrassed is because he was trying to give these fake awards to people in exchange for $5 $5,000 who would then make this public that they had received it. he twice targeted the same strip club in dallas which went public with it both times saying, we are not your entrepreneur of the year, newt. it's sort of a churn thing. it doesn't matter what you're doing factually. >> it is. it's like these marketing schemes where you don't really have the product or you convince

other neighbors to sell your product and then you get money for foisting it on them. it's like snake oil salesman and yet this guy was speaker of the house. he's not just clown that walked off the street. >> and rick santorum and mike huckabee both did well in the republican nominations. what about the bill kristol diagnosis here, which is that the conservative movement has been descended into a racket and needs to be refounded as a cause? >> well, i'm sure he's right but he's being disingenuous but the biggest racket is the mourdock racket. take karl rove. all right. he's been benched at the moment at fox news. he has a column every week -- now it doesn't say romney is going to win. it says obama is going to fail. i'm sure impeachment is not far

around the corner. "wall street journal" was or at least used to be a serious paper. you don't have someone doing that who is then raising money from super pacs for billionaire and spending them in ways that are off the books that are not transparent. that is a racket. he uses wall street journal and to raise money for his own -- i'm sure he gets a lovely salary from american crossroads, too. so will bill kristol go after mourdock of which he is a contributor? i don't think so. a lot of these scams are ridiculous but dick morris is relatively small potatoes. he's so vulgar and so ridiculous and he doesn't hide it very well and he's so transparent. but what about all of the others and the big stuff? so i think kristol, yes, he's

right, but is anything going to happen? >> and when you're talking about the big leagues -- >> yeah. >> thank you very much for coming here to talk about this. frank rich is writer at large for a new york magazine. my colleague lawrence o'donnell does not to prove why he is indispensable but yesterday he did it in the rewrite. it's coming up next.

the problem for boehner is, i oppose tax rate increases because tax rate increases cost american jobs. that gives you no room to give on rates. it is, by the way, not an original thought. who said this? the tax increase will kill job and lead to a recession and the recession will force people out of work and on to unemployment and actually increase the

deficit. that's newt gingrich in 1993 on the clinton tax increase and those of us who were working on the other side of that tax increase, newt, have been waiting for your apology for 20 years for being completely wrong about that. >> i don't agree with you. >> but the economy soared. no one lost a job because of that tax increase. there was no recession. >> baloney. >> there was no recession. >> lawrence o'donnell on "meet the press" this weekend enjoying a long delayed accountability from former speaker of the house, newt gingrich. the reason that feels good to watch is because it's so rare and so satisfying to have real historical context and accountability on these self-serving power play of the moment. that is usually what they talk about. that was a substantive point about the knowable evidence of what happened the last time we tried this thing that we are now considering trying again. the fight is over whether to keep all of the bush tax cuts or

whether the rates for the highest income can go back to what they were under president clinton? and as lawrence said, the first year of his presidency, he created taxes. he created a new bracket for the highest income and the corporate tax rate. newt gingrich really was a leading voice in a republican chorus predicting that if clinton got his way, the country would crumble. it did not crumble. >> i believe this will lead to recession next year. this is the democrat machine's recession and each one of them will be held personally accountable. >> it's going to slow the economy, put people out of work. i've been saying for the last week, the person that i feel the worst about in all of this is the person filling out a job application because it's a tight job market now and it's only going to get tighter. >> the proof will be in the pudding. we're going to come back here next year. there will be higher deficits, there will be more spending, it will continue to have a very slow economy, people aren't going to go to work.

>> that takes me back. you have to remember the great recession of the clinton administration, the double-digit unemployment, the bread lines? yeah. i don't remember that either. >> think about it, there probably have never been better people are doing so well and in an economy that just gets stronger and stronger. the latest measure are the numbers that are in for the end of 1998 and they are sensational. >> the numbers are astonishing. the economy growing at the fastest pace in more than two years. >> there's a job for everybody who wants one. interest rates are incredibly low and there's hardly any inflation. >> more good news, paychecks growing at the fastest clip in five years. up almost 3 1/2% last year alone. >> the disastrous result of the clinton tax rates. there's no shame in being wrong. people get stuff wrong all the time. when you do get stuff wrong, though, it's worth in thing so